:rolleyes:
Homeless became epidemic when cheap housing disappeared. Before that, schizophrenics and other such people who lost their rooms or apartments due to not paying the rent while incarcerated in the local psychiatric bin could get themselves indoors fairly easily — it might not have been overly pleasant digs but there were cheap places you could rent for a single night.
Gentrification created homelessness, not directly but indirectly.
People with a psychiatric diagnosis generally are not homeless directly because of their mental condition. They become homeless because they have an episode, the episode results in the loss of their current housing situation, and then it’s difficult and expensive to get a new place.
If every psychiatric facility was obliged to set up people with a rented room prepaid through the end of the month as a component of their discharge, that would help a great deal.
Most of us aren’t crack addicts or fundamentally incapable of attending to paying our rent, believe it or not.